RConversation

Hao is Free!!!

(photo of Hao at Yosemite in happier times)

People around the world have been rejoicing since Hao Wu's sister Nina Wu announced on her blog that Hao has been released from wherever the police were holding him. He is now at home in Beijing with his family. We hope he will rest and take care of himself... and that people will leave him in peace to recover from his ordeal.

It's impossible to know right now what will happen next, what caused his release at this time, or whether the story is completely over.

However there is no doubt that all the expressions of support around the world - from media, politicians, bloggers, and other citizens writing letters and signing petitions - have had an impact. We have made it clear to the Chinese government that their treatment of Hao was a cause for national shame. We have given Hao's family and loved ones moral support in the face of a lot of nastiness and negativity as they worked to get him released. But most importantly, the global show of support will no doubt be a great source of strength as Hao recovers from his ordeal and copes with its aftermath.
Thanks to everybody who has helped.

Free Hao Wu!!!

We are now on Day 133 since Hao Wu, Chinese filmmaker and Global Voices Northeast Asia Editor, disappeared into detention without charge. We have been doing what we can to keep Hao's case from being forgotten. The WSJ's Geoffrey Fowler now has an in-depth story titled Gray Zone: An Arrest in China Spotlights Limits to Artistic Freedom in China, detailing Hao's detention and the context in which it happened. Here's how it begins:

Gray Zone
An Arrest in China Spotlights Limits To Artistic Freedom
Hao Wu Set Out to Make Film On Unofficial Churches, Then Vanished From Sight Blog Advice: 'Be Careful, Man'

By GEOFFREY A. FOWLER July 3, 2006; Page A1

After 12 years in the U.S., filmmaker Hao Wu returned to his homeland two years ago to document the changes shaping Chinese society. He fell in with a crowd of artists and writers and often wrote on his blog about balancing American ideals of civil liberty with the practical realities he found in China.

"Change has to happen," he wrote in a Feb. 17 posting. "But the Chinese have to figure it out themselves."

Five days later, Mr. Wu was arrested and he has been in detention ever since. His alleged crime remains a mystery to his friends, his family and even the lawyer his sister hired to help. These people believe he was detained over his work on a documentary film about Christian churches that aren't recognized by the Chinese government. The lawyer, Wu Yigang, says the Beijing police told him the detention is related to "state secrets," which limits the possibility of a defense. The Public Security Ministry didn't respond to questions.

After describing the contradictory and often confusing cultural and political situation in China, Fowler continues:

Mr. Wu holds a green card but hasn't yet received U.S. citizenship, according to his friends. "His dream is for speaking out freely, and for making films...to let people in other countries see what was really happening in China," says his sister Nina Wu, in a March interview. Ms. Wu, a mutual-fund manager in Shanghai, quit her job recently to pursue her brother's release full time. "He knows there are some problems here but he loves China and thinks things are getting better and better."

Click here to read the rest.

It has been nearly a month since Hao's sister Nina last wrote on her blog. An excerpt from that post:

Back to Beijing again. I missed my brother when staring at his books and things. Hard to believe that their owner has been gone for so long. Looking at the note folded in the book on which my brother wrote down the address of a restaurant, I can’t help crying out. I saw his clean and fresh handwriting, and imagined his state of mind when writing down these notes. He is always my brother. A person with such simplicity and passion for life does not deserve such winding complications. No matter what others might say about him, our firm belief and trust in him will not change.

I've confirmed that Nina is ok. However her health is not great and she's under a lot of pressure. Please head over to Freehaowu.org and hit the comments section and share some supportive words with her, and please go over to her Chinese blog and let her know that you are rooting for her, and for Hao.

Also please don't forget to sign the petition and write letters to your elected representatives and local media. If you have a website or blog click here for "Free Hao Wu" badges you can put on your site.

China's State Kidnappers

I've got an editorial running in today's Washington Post, titled Shattering the China Dream. I talk about the way in which Chinese state agents are in the habit of what amounts to kidnapping: abducting people for long periods of time without any kind of charges, formal arrest, or any kind of legal process whatsoever. Blogger and filmmaker Hao Wu has now been held for 58 days in this way. As far as many Americans are concerned, such unlawful detentions cast a very long shadow over Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to the U.S. this week.  My piece concludes:

With Chinese President Hu Jintao in the United States this week, Americans have an opportunity to assess his regime. What is this country to think? On the one hand his government has raised the living standards of millions of its citizens with economic reform and international trade. On the other hand his underlings trample shamelessly on his people's basic human rights.

The careers of some politicians in both countries -- not to mention military budgets -- would no doubt benefit if our two nations became enemies. As an American who lived and worked in China for more than a decade, however, I continue to believe that peaceful engagement between the United States and China is in the best interest of both nations' people.

But we have a serious problem that won't go away: How can Americans respect or trust a regime that kidnaps our friends?

Hao's birthday was on Tuesday. His sister Nina says you can give him a birthday present by doing something to lobby for his realease. Click here to participate in our letter writing campaign and click here to sign an online petition demanding Hao's release.

Help Hao Wu!! Petition & Letter-writing drive

It is now Day 54 since Hao disappeared into detention - still no charges against him, still no formal arrest, nothing. His sister Nina Wu continues to blog in Chinese about the nightmare. We continue to translate. In a recent entry she wrote:

As an ordinary Chinese person, it is depressing. Although the provisions of relevant laws and regulations set the rights of suspects, when you actually do things according to law you discover that you are facing a black hole.

Please sign the petition for Hao's release here.

Want to do more? Here are the guidelines for our letter-writing campaign.

China continues to hold Hao Wu without charge

It has now been 52 days. Global Voices Online Northeast Asia editor, blogger, and filmmaker Hao Wu still has not been charged or given access to a lawyer. We still don't know where he is.

His sister Nina Wu continues to blog in Chinese about the ordeal.  We continue to post translations of her blog at Freehaowu.org. Here are some recent excerpts. On Day 50 she thanked everybody who cares:

Today I received phone calls, emails, and greetings from friends one after another.  They were all asking about Haozi, but I disappointed them.  Currently the family members have no further information about Haozi.  Like everyone else, we are impatiently waiting.  Thank you, friends.  For the many ways in which everyone has spontaneously made efforts to help Haozi be free sooner, we sincerely express our gratitude.  Our family feels gratified to know that Hoazi has these kinds of friends.  I believe that the love from family members, friends, and all who know or do not know Haozi will allow him to see the springtime sunlight again soon.

Nina has often been pointing out on her blog that as a privileged middle class Chinese who works in finance, and who has been generally unconcerned with politics, she hadn't been aware of the extent to which a Chinese person can suddenly lose his or her rights.

...before this happened to my brother, I felt that I had it all: family, friends, a job I liked, and a typical Shanghai “little capitalist” life. I felt that I had the ability to control everything. I could choose the lifestyle I wanted; I could choose my circle of friends…in fact this was just what it looked like. It is so easy for someone to lose his or her privileges. An ordinary person can very easily be taken from his or her daily life. It doesn’t require any warning or reason, and of course it doesn’t require the assent of that person. Legal help is also unavailable. Even though the thirty-sixth clause of the Constitution states, “The physical freedom of the citizens of the People’s Republic of China cannot be violated…it is forbidden to detain or use other methods to take away or limit the physical freedom of a citizen; it is forbidden to illegally search the body of a citizen,” my brother has already lost his freedom. The staff of the Procuratorate did not deny that laws were being broken in the current stage, but no organization or person has stopped these illegal phenomena from continuing.

Really, only when your own rights are violated do you realize their importance to you. I am now beginning to pay attention to law, beginning to look for rights I might have. I hope that it isn’t all too late.

At the same time, I know that I already have lost my right to privacy. I know that they know my every movement. Actually, when you act magnanimously, there is nothing to conceal. I haven’t done anything that I’d be ashamed to show others. I will continue to strive for my brother’s early release. It’s just that I don’t know: when all the legal channels have been exhausted, will anything be left?

Before Hao's detention, she hadn't been aware of the extent of Chinese Internet censorship, either:

After Haozi disappeared, browsing the Internet and searching for related information became a mandatory daily class.  I have googled a great deal of information on “Hao Wu,” but I can’t visit many of the search results, especially addresses with .org suffixes.  Eight or nine out of ten will return “Impossible to display this webpage.”  I don’t know what kind of sensitive information these websites contain. Before, I did not believe in “Internet censorship.”  This was because I used to visit mostly finance and investment websites, which rarely have problems.  Only when I faced a serious predicament did I discover that this was a real problem.

Today someone asked me about the effect of Haozi’s incident on me and other family members.  I think the most direct effect is that I began to be concerned about my own “rights” and the social problems that Haozi was concerned about. 

One webpage Nina will be unable to visit without a proxy server is this Radio Free Asia interview with Hu Jia, an AIDS activist who was recently released after being detained without charge for over a month. He describes the circumstances of his detention:

They put a black hood over my head, removing my glasses first, so I couldn’t see anything. Sometimes they forced my head right down to the floor as the car was driving along…

They were making sure that I had no idea where they were taking me. I started to vomit at one point because I was extremely car-sick. I’m not normally car-sick, but because one minute the car was accelerating, the next minute they were slamming on the brakes, and me with my head pressed down against the floor...

...

When my mother and wife were going to the police station to look for me, they ran into police officers who had been watching me. But they absolutely refused to admit they were holding me.

The place was called the the No. 5 Production Brigade of Taihu township, Tongzhou county, Beijing. It used to be countryside but now it’s been turned into one of those holiday villages. I was locked up in the inner room of one of their suites. It was very cold. At any given time there’d be seven or eight police officers watching me. They did it in shifts.

I had no idea of all the reports that were circulating about me. I had no way of knowing. They had all been told not to bring any news from the outside world in with them. They were also very careful about their mobile phones. They were very careful to keep them far away from me for fear I would manage any sort of communication at all with the outside world.

After they had kidnapped me and taken me to that place, I asked them why they were doing it, but they wouldn’t tell me…That evening, three people came to visit from the Beijing municipal headquarters of the State Security Bureau. They were very young. They started asking me about the hunger strike, because when Gao Zhisheng had put out his statement about the hunger strike, he had included my name.

I answered all their questions either by saying I couldn’t answer or by suggesting they go and look it up on the Internet. They got nothing new out of me, and then they left. After that, I think they realized that they weren’t going to change my attitude or achieve any sort of cooperation or communication with me.

Yesterday lunchtime another four people came from the Beijing municipal headquarters and took all the notes I had made about who had come to see me, my diary, everything on my person. They did a very intimate search.

Then they put the black hood over my eyes again and took me out to the suburbs of Beijing and left me to walk home, after warning me that more misfortune would come upon me if I continued to take part in those activities – any activities relating to human rights – I would be detained again and my family would be left to worry about me.

Police behaving like kidnappers or hostage-takers. Is Hao being held under similar circumstances? We have no way of knowing.

How does it feel when your brother gets detained without charge for over a month and the police won't tell you why, or where he is?

Nina Wu, sister of the detained filmmaker and blogger Hao Wu, continues to document her ordeal on her blog, Missing Haozi. (Haozi is Hao's family nickname.)  Yesterday, in a post about visiting the police  station (translated into English here), she wrote:

Outside, I have the support of a husband, friends and lawyers. Inside, my brother cannot read or receive any information from outside. Isn’t he even more alone and helpless? I must remain firm. I can’t break down before my brother does. Just as I believe that my brother has a generous and loving heart, I will always believe that my brother is innocent. I only hope that his honest personality will not bring him too much hardship and suffering.

We will continue to provide full English translations of her blog posts on the Free Hao Wu website.

Drop Nina a line in her comments section and let her know how much we admire her for being so strong. Zeng Jinyan, the wife of the recently released AIDS activist Hu Jia, has been blogging for the past month about her husband's detention, and now the circumstances of his release. How does a Chinese family's life change after one member returns from detention?  Today she described how she and her husband are being followed everywhere they go by men with cameras.  She also left an encouraging comment on Nina's blog [my translation, corrections welcome]:

Nina, today on my blog I wrote this, in hopes that everybody will come here and support you. Take care of yourself, keep yourself safe, conserve your energy for the long haul.

"What a huge social stage. I've been part of the audience, then I got on stage, now I'm audience and on stage at the same time. After Hu Jia came home, I heard that some other women are suffering similar pain to my own. When I see these two links, http://ethanzuckerman.com/haowu/ (English) http://spaces.msn.com/wuhaofamily/ (Chinese) its clear that the people writing them are going through great unhappiness. Through the words I re-lived the pain, re-lived the cruelty. It's like being betrayed all over again. There's nothing I can do, I can only give Nina a message of support each day. The fact that our blogs have not been shut down is something worth celebrating, but it's unclear if this is a step toward freedom or not."

Can blogs stop human rights violations? Jinyan is right to be skeptical. But will many more Chinese become aware of what's happening to their own countrymen through blogs like Nina's and Jinyan's? It seems likely.  Victims and their families now have a direct means to speak out, in their own way. They have a vehicle through which they can receive sympathy from people inside China and people around the world. They can connect with other victims. They "own" and have control over their own stories in a way that was never the case before. In the past, the only way other Chinese people knew about detentions like these were via Western media reports, which sometimes filtered back into China. Such reports are often discounted as exaggerations or Western anti-China propaganda. Many Chinese feel they have good reason to take human rights stories coming out of the West with a grain of salt. But now victimized Chinese can speak directly to their fellow countrymen - without their voices making the double pass through the filter of Western perception and political agendas. This is so much more powerful, and so much more difficult to discount.

Hao Wu's sister blogs about his detention

(Cross posted at www.Freehaowu.org or http://ethanzuckerman.com/haowu)

Nina Wu, sister of the detained filmmaker and Global Voices contributor Hao Wu has now started a blog on MSN Spaces. It includes a photo gallery of "Haozi" as the family calls him. Even if you don't know Chinese, leave her a comment in English and let her know your support for Hao. Thanks to a volunteer who wishes to remain anonymous, we have a full translation of her first post, below. She includes an update on her latest visit to the police. It is a chilling account of what it's like to be the family member of a Chinese person who has been detained without charge. I have put a few key paragraphs in bold:

Ever since I found "Where is Hu Jia?" (http://spaces.msn.com/zengjinyan/) on Google, Jinyan's blog was a rest stop for my soul. I would often read her diary and the comments following it, sharing her joys and sorrows, as I too had experienced the pain and confusion after the disappearance of a loved one. Now, Hu Jia has returned. I am wholeheartedly happy for [Jinyan] and her family, and I will continue to search for my brother. With the support of my friends, I believe that I will also wait for the day when I can smile again.

I had never thought that I, after becoming an adult, would write anything besides research reports and investment records. In high school I experienced the embarrassment of someone secretly reading my diary, and I also read and heard many stories about diaries during the Cultural Revolution. After twenty, I stopped trusting the pen to record my own thoughts and feelings. Perhaps because work is so time-consuming, I only knew about the most popular blogs on the Internet, but I had never visited one myself. After my brother disappeared, I visited his blog, Beijing or Bust (spaces.msn.com/chinafool/), for the first time. Once I started I couldn't control myself, and read his stories one after another.

My own writing has always been weak, and composition gave me even more of a headache. But now I believe that true feelings will leap onto the keyboard, as I type out the characters of my family and friends who miss Wu Hao. These feelings do not require eloquence or adornment. They just need to be faithfully recorded. I hope it can fill in for the "I love you, brother," that is usually so hard for me to say.

Having always been proud of my enthusiasm for my job, I had hoped to remain as dedicated to my work as before, but I still left the Shenyin & Wanguo Spring Investment Strategy Conference early to drive to the petition office of the Beijing Public Security Bureau. I hoped that after Hu Jia had returned home I could get information about my brother.

This time they did not ask me to fill out paperwork. It was the same officer as last time. He and another one promised to get in touch with the officer in charge of the case. After coming in and out many times and waiting, I never met the officer in charge. I only received a message: Wu Hao has committed a crime (When I came on March 20, they only told me that Wu Hao had been arrested.) They still refused to inform me what crime he was suspected of, and also refused to allow our lawyer to see him. Threatening to go to the Ministry of Public Security was also useless.

Can these law enforcement organs really ignore his rights and those of his relatives, and after detaining him for five weeks not offer any explanation? Anger swelled in my chest.

When I heard that the repeated promises of a deadline for my brother's release from the previous employee in-charge were just "one of the working techniques" I nearly burst with fury.

That dignified state employees would carelessly trample on someone's dignity, that a promise to a family member could be torn to shreds like wastepaper—what powers did the law grant them? Thinking about it, the people I dealt with never showed police credentials (despite repeated requests), and never called each other by name. I only know that the lead officer is surnamed Sun. After graduating from police academy he spent some time as a teacher, and then moved to this job for (?) [sic] 15 years. Even this limited information might be false. I was angry at myself for my political naïveté, and angry at this place that displayed the police insignia but did not actually "Serve the People."

Finally, I got in an argument with the guard over using the restroom.

It was all about regulations.  It was all about protecting secrets.

Why didn't they dare to write it down? I needed to vent my anger, but finally I just ran out sobbing. I couldn't make trouble for the insignificant guard and staff. In vast Beijing, finding a place where people can talk sense and speak clearly is terribly difficult.

In the evening, while eating dinner with friends, I found out that a friend had a terrifying experience this afternoon. He tried calling me and J for a long time, but the call wouldn't go through. He worried that we had had an accident. Thankfully, he persisted in dialing the number until the call went through. Only then was his mind at ease. It was strange, because at the time I was in XXXX's [sic] hall, where the cell phone signal was excellent, but my phone didn't ring. I checked the call record but there were no missed calls. Why didn't it go through? I thought about it and realized that other friends also complained that I wasn't answering my phone.

Very fishy. Finally, like a martyr saying her final words, I gave my friends contact information for my husband and my former employer. I felt disconnected from reality, like in a novel. Would anything really happen? I had thought that a person disappearing without a trace was something that only happened in novels, but hadn't that already happened in real life too?

I had to give my daughter a call. When she said "Mommy" over the phone, my tears began to flow again. As she, completely unaware of what was happening, excitedly reported her dancing achievements and progress in class, I was silently apologizing to her. Mom has been missing too often. Mom really wants to hold your little body, share every little thing that happens at school, and read to you. I hope that everything ends quickly, and your uncle can come back soon. Then Mom can hold your little hand again.

Thank you, Huang. I did not want what happened in my life to disrupt the lives of my friends, but you still learned that information from the World Journal Even if you can't help, your phone call let me feel the warmth of friendship in the cold Beijing spring.

I hope that friends can use this blog to enter my life, searching for my brother in 2006.

Thanks to Geoffrey Fowler of the Wall Street Journal for his story today: China's Detention of Filmmaker Rouses Fears over Curbs on Media.  (The story is accessible without a subscription.) Key excerpt (emphasis added):

Mr. Wu's sister, Nina Wu, said the Beijing Public Security Bureau's petition office confirmed Mr. Wu had been detained but won't specify any charges against him. "His dream is in China," she said. "His dream is for speaking out freely, and for making films....He knows there are some problems here, but he loves China and thinks things are getting better and better."

In response to questions from The Wall Street Journal about why Mr. Wu was detained, the Public Security Ministry and the State Council Information Office said they are looking into the matter.

A half-dozen friends and colleagues who have known Mr. Wu for about 20 years, both in China and the U.S., describe him as outgoing and principled and said he hasn't had problems with drugs or the law. What might have spurred the arrest, they said, is the film Mr. Wu had been working on for several months about underground churches. They said that on Feb. 24 Mr. Wu's editing equipment and several videotapes were removed from his apartment.

The Chinese government really shoots itself in the foot by detaining people like Hao.

Hu Jia plans to sue his captors, day 35 for Hao Wu

AIDS activist Hu Jia's wife Zeng Jinyan reports on her blog that he was dropped off by police yesterday outside a shopping center about an hour's walk from his home on the outskirts of Beijing. In the 41 days of his detention he had no idea what was happening in the outside world. She says he returned exhausted, witha long beard. She took him to the hospital for a checkup in the morning and they found liver problems he hasn't had before. More tests, treatment, and follow-up will be needed. Meanwhile Reuters spoke to Hu Jia and here is an exceprt of the story:

Security police took him from his home and held him without any legal formalities in two "vacation villages" on the eastern outskirts of Beijing, never informing his family of his whereabouts, Hu told Reuters.

Hu said he was unbroken by the experience, which he said included a month-long hunger-protest, roughing up, and sleepless nights. He said he plans to sue the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau for unlawful detention.

"I've always felt this life is like cat and mouse, but I'm the cat," he said. "They're breaking the law and they know it, and I'm going to sue them to show them and the world that people can defend their rights."

The circumstances of Hu Jia's detention are very similar to those of our Global Voices Northeast Asia editor Hao Wu, who has been held without charge or legal representation since February 22nd - that's 35 days now. (See recent AP and Reuters coverage here.) I am concerned that Hao's detention is equally bad for his health.

Despite some nay-sayers who think publicity is counterproductive, it would appear that publicity did help bring about Hu Jia's release. When working in China in the 1990's, I covered the jailings and releases of quite a number of Chinese people detained or sentenced for political reasons - some of whom considered themselves dissidents and some of whom did not, like Hao. In all cases, people reported that outside attention seemed to have resulted in better or at least more careful treatment of them physically, as compared to other prisoners whose cases were unknown to the outside world. In many cases people got released right before a major U.S.-China summit. As it so happens, President Hu Jintao is coming to the U.S. for a summit on April 20th.

As one Beijing-based journalist observes:

Will the public campaign to win Hao Wu's release work? The timing might be right. Chinese President Hu Jintao will soon be visiting the U.S., a trip that was supposed to take place last September but was put off because of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe. The Chinese government very much wants this visit to go well, so the leaders might decide that letting a lone blogger go free in the lead up to the summit might be an easy way to score some points.

I hope he gets released before then. But if not perhaps Hao's case will become part of a resumed U.S.-China human rights dialogue.